What Came Before
by Rodwen Fefalas
Summary: AU. Bella wishes her mother would get back together with her father, but she doesn't know how to tell Renee that.
1. Chapter 1

"Can't I just talk to your mother?" Phil asked, sounding exasperated.

Bella paled. "No. No, I don't want you anywhere near her anymore, do you understand? I asked you to move because I wanted you out of her life!" she said. Her whole body shook. She felt as if she was doing a great and terrible job of expelling a demon and she didn't know how to calm down from it. She stood on the deck of her mom's house in Arizona, under the shade of the awning, her arm wrapped tightly around her stomach as she held the house phone in a shaking hand. Even though her bare feet were hot where they touched the deck, and the sun scaled her skin when she made the mistake of leaving the shade, she couldn't seem to stay warm.

Phil sighed on the other line. "Look, if you just let me speak to Renee, we can clear up this whole goddamned business –"

"That's how this whole thing got started," Bella said, "with you talking to my mom. I told you, I don't want you around her." She heard something rattling indoors and paused, holding the speaker to her shoulder and glancing inside of the sliding doors to the darkened kitchen, living room, and front hallway at the other side of the house. The front door was still closed, the frosted glass appearing to be a sheet of white in the light of the sun. The front of the house had no awning, no real protection from the heat. "Besides, she's not even home right now –"

"She said she didn't love Charlie! I don't know what's going on over there, but she told me that that was all over and done with. Is that what this is about? Is he back in her life again?" Phil demanded, but the doubt in his voice sounded palpable.

Bella scoffed and shook her head, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear as she straightened and resumed her pacing across the length of the deck. "She's not back in her life the way you were, if that's what you mean," she said. "He's still my father, though. I don't care what her feelings are about him. I'm going to talk to him all I want."

She heard Phil sigh heavily on the other line and imagined him rubbing a hand over the top of his head. She knew him well enough to know that he would do that when he happened to be aggravated, and part of her, a part deep down and resting in the dark, smiled with pride at the idea that she could aggravate him. She hadn't made his life hell the way some teenagers would with their almost-step-parents, but things had changed. She didn't trust him anymore – there had been too many other men like him in her mom's life and none of them ended up staying of their own volition – and she planned to stand her ground on this. "Did you say she wasn't home?" he asked, his voice heavy and resigned.

"I did."

She could almost see him nodding. "All right, I'll call back later on this evening."

Bella scoffed again. This guy is un-fucking-believable! "Try calling back in a million evenings!" she said before hanging up on him.

Throwing the cordless house phone onto the padded deck chair beside her, she hid her face in her hands and tried to shake off the slight tremors that had started to infiltrate her body. He's gone now, so you don't have to worry about him. It's all right, it's over.

It didn't feel like it was over and she knew, for the most part, something had already begun.

"Bella, are you sure you don't want to go to your dad's?" her mom asked that night at dinner.

Bella could feel her mom watching her as she picked through her food, her mind still on the phone call from earlier in the afternoon and wondering whether or not Phil was going to call back. "Is that the tone of pleading that I hear?" she teased, but her voice shook a slight bit with her wariness and her fooling grin faltered.

Her mom shook her head and scooped up some of the rice on her fork. "I just don't want you to feel like you have to stay here just because of me, and I think that's part of the reason you do."

Bella shook her head. "Mom, I don't have to go see dad, okay?" She smiled a little bit more easily this time. "Besides, it's almost the summer. I'm going to California in a few months anyway to meet up with him."

Her mom shook her head again as she raised a glass of water to her lips. "Not months anymore, is it? Weeks, now. Can you believe that?"

Bella snorted and ate some of her dinner. "No, actually. I can't."

She could still feel her mom watching her, as if she expected Bella to sprout wings and take off into the distance or something. It was a look Bella was somewhat used to now, given the recent events with Phil and the number of phone calls her mother was no longer getting – rather, the number of phone calls her mother wasn't personally receiving. When Phil used to call constantly, Bella remembered, her mom would be on the phone for hours as he tried to convince her and Bella to move out to Florida with him, which Bella didn't want to do, not when she was this close to being done with school.

Once I go to college, they can do whatever the hell they want, but until then, I'm living here and I'd really like it if they stopped trying to push the matter. That's what she'd been writing in her journal since the topic came up and she hadn't faltered in it since.

"What do you want to do for graduation?" her mom asked, sitting cross-legged on her chair the way Bella did.

"Mom, what are you doing?" she asked with a laugh.

Her mom shrugged. "I'm just trying to see if it's comfortable. You're always sitting like this."

Bella shook her head. "I don't really want to do anything for graduation."

Again, she could feel her mother's eyes on her, studying her. "Is this because of Phil?"

Yes. "What? No!" Bella scoffed and pushed away from the table. "No, this has nothing to do with him! Why does everything always have something to do with Phil?"

"And you're sure you don't want to go visit your dad?"

Bella's eyes flashed. "Is that what this is all about? You want me to leave so you can get back with him?"

"We are two grown-ups, Bella. I think we can figure things out for ourselves."


	2. Chapter 2

"So I was talking to Mike the other day and he told me that the homework I did last night wasn't the one we were supposed to do and now I'm kind of freaking out because I spent about two hours on it – you know how bad I am at math," Jess said as she and Bella ate lunch at a picnic table in front of the school. "And also, he says he's taking Ginger to the dance at the end of the year next year, can you believe that? It's ridiculous. They just met a few days ago, and the only reason they even met was because the school likes to plan these stupid "spirit" picnics. He doesn't even like tennis, and she's the lead tennis player! How ridiculous is that? As if they have anything in common – which they don't because she's never seen a play in her life and he's directing one next fall."

"Hey, can I tell you something?" Bella asked when Jess had finally taken a breath for a bite of her sandwich.

Jess's chewing slowed as she studied Bella's face. "Of course you can. You know that."

Bella nodded and picked pieces of her sandwich crust off, crumbling them between her fingers. "Right, but I need you to keep this one to yourself. It's…a bit of a secret and I don't really want any of them –" she gestured to Mike and Eric and the others who were sitting in a circle a few steps away from them " – to know what's going on. Not yet, anyway."

Jess put her sandwich down and leaned her forearms across the table. "Bella, you can tell me. I promise I won't say anything," she said, staring Bella in the eyes.

Bella pushed her lunch wrappers away and leaned closer to Jess. "Okay, this is what's been happening," she said, lowering her voice. "Phil's been calling my mom for the past few days and she doesn't seem to notice very much about it, but I think he's trying to get back to her again and I really don't want that happening."

Jess laughed a little bit, but softly, so that it might've looked like Bella had just told her a really excellent story about someone only the two of them knew. "Bella, I think you're giving this a bit too much thought. Phil's a nice guy. Why wouldn't you want your mother to spend time with him?"

"Because I don't like him!" she whispered in harsh tones, pointing to herself to punctuate her words. Bella glanced over at the table with their other friends and relaxed when she saw that they hadn't noticed anything. "Also, I think she wants to get back together with dad."

Jess, who'd been taking another bite of her sandwich, dropped her hands to the table with a thump and turned to Bella with wide eyes. "Shut. Up," she said, her voice a little louder now. "No way. That's ridiculous. Why would she do that – she never liked him that way before now? I thought they didn't have the right chemistry or something."

Bella groaned and hid her face in her hands. "She says they don't—didn't—I don't even know. She said it so long ago that everything just kind of mushed together in my head and now I can't figure out where she's going with this or what she wants from my dad." She groaned again and stuffed the crusts of her sandwich and her empty bag of fruit into her paper bag. "I feel like I need to talk to him," she said, standing up.

Like a flash of lightning, Jess reached out and grabbed Bella's ankle as she lifted it over the bench seat. "Do you really think that's a good idea?" she asked, her voice a little too loud for the conversation. Jess snapped it shut with a click and they both looked around, but no one had been paying them any amount of attention. "I mean, I don't think he would know she's doing this," she continued in a softer voice.

Her grip relaxed and Bella pulled her ankle away, hopping in place to keep her balance. "Of course he wouldn't know she's doing this, Jess! They haven't spoken properly in ages." She pushed a hand through her hair and shook her head, looking around at the small schoolyard. "That's why I still want to talk to him, but I have the feeling that this isn't going to go well. I want to know what I should do about all of this."

"But what if he takes it the wrong way? He still likes your mom, doesn't he?" Jess asked. Bella thought about it for a minute, and then her shoulders slumped as she nodded. "What if she's just using him as an excuse and he winds up back in love with her?"

Bending, Bella picked up her backpack and zipped it closed. "There are worse things right now," she said, and marched towards the trash barrels.

"Your mom says you don't want to come visit me this year," Charlie said over the phone that evening. "What's up?"

Bella looked around her room and took a shaky breath. On the bookshelf across from her bed, she could see the picture of her family from when she was five. Her mother smiled and held her hands as she stood beside _her _mother on the lawn behind Bella's grandmother's house. That'd been years ago and Charlie had been long gone from the picture. "I need to stay here this year. Something's come up," she said, cringing at the words as they came out of her mouth.

Even over the phone, she could feel her father sending out feelers and picking out the bullshit. He sighed, probably through his nose, she guessed, and she could almost see him shaking his head. "You know I don't like it when you lie to me, Isabella." She heard something slap and she imagined his hand falling against his thigh, the way it did when he felt like he was powerless to do something. She vaguely recalled him doing that when she'd been a little kid. "I like having you here during the summer. What's changed? Is it something with your mom? What's up? Do I need to speak with her about this?"

_Shit_. Bella's jaw dropped and she shook her head, sticking her hand in her pocket. "No! No, you don't have to do that."

Charlie's voice got quiet, as if they were int he room together and not on the phone, hundreds of miles apart. "Is it your mom's diet again? Is she changing something about it and needs you to be there to...I don't know, _monitor_ it, or something?"

Bella laughed, remembering how that'd happened two years prior, when Renee had first met Phil and been so embarrassed about her own lack of fitness that she'd attempted to become a jogger and a cyclist. "No, no, it's nothing like that. I just-I think mom needs me a _little _bit more than you do this year." She bit her lip.

"Isabella, what the hell's going on?" he asked.

Her nerves bunched together and she wiped her mouth on her hand, pacing across her bedroom floor to stare out the window facing the backyard. Outside, she could see her mother working with some friends, the hose dripping in one of her hands while the other waved as she talked. Her mom's friends laughed and started strolling through the flower garden as Renee went back to watering for a little bit. "Mom needs me here for a while," she said.

"Yes, and _I _need you in Washington! Your mother gets you all the time. It's not fair that I only get to see you twice a year, and now it's not even that!" he snapped.

Bella shook her head. "I'm sorry, but we're doing other things right now and she needs me."

"Isabella," Charlie growled. "What are you doing that's so important?"

Bella could feel the lies tangling up in her head and when she couldn't think straight enough to pull one out, she blurted, "I'm trying to stop Phil and her from getting together." No sooner had the words come out of her mouth than she'd slapped a hand over her lips, her eyes wide with her secret's exposure. For what felt like forever, the line seemed to go dead with her father's silence. She almost wished it had, but there wasn't that lack of tone, that solid lack of space where no sound existed between her and the caller to signify that the line had died. Her father's silence weighed.

"Why would you do something like that?" he asked in a small voice.

Bella took a breath through her nose, holding the phone away from her mouth a little bit so that he wouldn't hear her trying to breathe. "I want you and her to get back together," she said, lifting her fingers long enough to speak and then covering her mouth again.

Another dead space filled the phone between them and then she heard Charlie sigh. She imagined he was rubbing the bridge of his nose, his eyes pinched shut. "Bella, sometimes-I worry about you," he said, but his voice came from a distance and she had to press the receiver to her ear to hear it.

"She's not happy with Phil, dad," Bella said in a low voice, pushing away the valence curtains to peer out the window again. Her mom had stopped watering and was sitting among her friends at the wire picnic table. Her broad straw hat and the table umbrella obscured their faces, but she could see one of her mom's legs and her left shoulder, forever sitting halfway outside in the sun.

"How do you know that? Did you ask her?" he asked, sounding tired of the conversation already.

Bella shook her head and let the curtain fall back into place as her mom's laughter drifted up to her. "I can tell, though. I'm her daughter. I can always tell."

"Bella," Charlie said. She could hear him measuring the words before he said them. "Are you sure you're not just projecting? Your mom told me-"

Bella straightened up, her eyes bright when she caught sight of them in the mirror. "So you _have_ talked to her!" she said, a smile crawling across her face.

"Only about _you_. She said you've been very off lately and she wanted to check in with me to see if I'd said anything." By the tone of his voice, she could tell he was shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

_Any idea like that _must_ be ludicrous._ "And what did you say?"

"I told her you hadn't talked to me in a very, very long time and I'm not sure what she wants, but, Bella, listen to me. If she wants to be with Phil, there's nothing you should do to try to prevent that unless he's really, really hurting her."

She ran her finger along a shelf of her bookcase and wiped the dust off her finger. "What if I don't like him?"

There was another long, weighted pause on the other end of the line before Charlie spoke again. "What do you mean, you don't like him?"

Bella nodded. "What I just said. What if I don't like him?" she asked.

She heard the distant sound of him groaning. "What do you mean? Not just 'I don't like him.' What's the reason you don't like him?" Charlie's voice got deeper. "Did he do something to you, Bella?"

She scoffed, shaking her head. "No! It's just-" She sighed and looked out the window again. Her mom and friends hadn't moved, but they'd propped their feet up on one another's chairs. She didn't like that she couldn't see them and part of her wished they'd take the umbrella down, but September in Arizona was still too warm to be in the sun without protection. "I feel like he wanted her to move with him. I feel like she was setting aside what she wanted so that she could travel around with him like some sort of stuffed pet or something."

"You're going to have to be a little bit more specific than that. Did he want you to move?"

Bella nodded. "Out of Arizona. He wanted us to go to Florida, but I really, really don't like that idea. We have everything here and he's chasing some" she waved her hand "pipe dream about playing baseball that's never going to work, and _she_ keeps falling for it!" She laughed a little bit at the ridiculousness of that, but she couldn't muster the energy enough to put humor into the laugh. "I mean, everything we want is here. Aside from you," she said in an offhanded tone of voice. Charlie didn't say anything and she imagined he was staring at his feet in embarrassment. "If he knows that, why would he want to move us away?"

She heard a huff of breath on the other line. "Well, darling, did you ever think that _he _might have family living in Florida that he wants to be closer to?"

Bella clenched her jaw and didn't say anything. She could almost see her father nodding.

"I didn't think so."

"We live _here, _dad. Our whole lives are _here_. We're not east coast people. We have everything we want _right here_. It was Phil's stupid idea to come all the way out west to find a date and now he's trying to bring us all back with him tot he other side of the world, and it doesn't _work_ like that! He can't just _uproot_ us all from where we're living and tell us where to go because _he _wants to go home! He's one person! He has to come out _here_."

She could imagine her father nodding. "And he did, and now he wants to go back."

Bella shook her head before she remembered that Charlie couldn't see it. "I don't even know if he's _from _Florida. I think he just wants to move there because that's where his baseball team is going."

"Then that's reason enough, I guess."

"No, it's not."

Charlie sighed. Again, Bella pictured him pinching the bridge of his nose. "Bella, tell me something. Have you spoken to your mom _at all _about this or just to me?"

_Just to you_. Bella didn't know how to answer that without coming across as a huge jerk. Normally, this wasn't her father's territory. He'd made that perfectly clear one evening over the summer while they were in California and a kid had come up to Bella and told her he thought she was cute. She'd flipped out and called him a whole slew of names and hidden under her towel where she sat on the beach, trying to hide herself from any more suitors trying to make their debut to her ten-year-old self. When Charlie came over from swimming in the beach-Bella had gotten out early-he'd asked what was wrong and what she was screaming about, only to laugh when she told him. He'd stopped laughing when he'd seen the tears in her eyes. After that, he was strictly the affectionate father who pulled her under his sopping wet arm, asked her if she wanted to go home, and bought her ice cream as they were leaving the parking lot. When he'd tried to ask her about it that evening, he'd stumbled over his words, making pained faces, and kept telling her that this was more of her mother's territory than his-she could call her, if that would help-but that it was okay if she wasn't ready for a boy to like her. In fact, he said, that was very good for him to hear and he was glad she'd already come to this decision.

"You should really, _really _talk to your mom about this," he said in his low, serious voice. "I know I've told you that this stuff isn't my territory, and that's still true to this day, but she needs to know. This-this, right now, this stuff you're telling me about-isn't really my business because it's your mom's life. You need to tell _her _how you're feeling because she's the one who can do something about it."

She nodded and promised him she would, that night. He thanked her for calling him, and Bella took that to mean "thank you for trusting me enough to tell me about this," but his voice had an edge to it that reminded her he wasn't the person she needed to tell.

At dinner that night, as her mom talked about her friend Jackie's exploits in the big city she'd just arrived home from, Bella lifted her head from her chicken and salad and said, "I don't want you to move with Phil to Florida."

Renee stared at her for a long while, her fork suspended over her plate. "Okay. What brought this on?" she asked, sounding as wary as she looked.

Bella took a deep breath and put her fork down. She listened to the metal ring as it landed on the wood of the table, and for a moment, it elongated the silence between them, which she didn't mind at all. While she listened to her flatware, she remained very much aware of the fact that her mother waited for an explanation.

_She's your mother. This shouldn't be that hard. She loves you and she wants to help. So why does it feel like a challenge? _Bella took another deep breath, trying to inhale around the weight on her chest. Every second she didn't say anything, breathing felt like it was becoming more difficult, which scared her where it should've spurred her into action.

The words spilled out the moment she opened her mouth. "I don't like that Phil came all the way over here from Florida and suddenly decides that we need to go back there with him. And it's not even that he wants _us _to go back, it's that he wants _you_ to go, and it's not that I'm feeling like he doesn't want me there or anything, but I know he wants you to meet his family. And I get that, I totally do, but that's not fair to us. He can't just come over here and tell you he loves you and then uproot us all from everything we have here. We were here first and _he _came to _us_, and that isn't fair. It feels like his excuse of the baseball team is the thing he's relying on to get us going back to Florida with him, and I hate it because I don't think we should. If he has family there, then they can be his support team. Why do _you_ have to be? I'm your daughter, I'm still here, and I was in your life first! It doesn't make sense to uproot us when everything we've known is here. I mean," she waved her hand towards the porch, "what about your friends? What about the people we've grown up with and who know us? Why do we have to leave them all behind to go following _Phil_ around? If he wants to have someone cheer him on, that's what he can go home for. Won't his family do that for him? Doesn't he have friends? Doesn't he have a life back in Florida that he can go home to?"

When she finally stopped for breath, Bella saw her mother smiling, and it threw her for a loop. _Had she always been doing that? The whole time?_ It wasn't even a malevolent smile-her mother smiled as if she'd known this all along and had been lying in wait for it to come out.

"I don't tell you that I love you enough," Renee said, and Bella could hear the suppressed laughter in the back of her voice.

She closed her mouth with a click of her jaw. "Mom, that's not the point. I'm not saying I don't feel _loved_, I'm saying I don't think it's fair of Phil to come waltzing in here -"

Renee put up a hand, shaking her head and laughing. "No, no, sweetheart, I do understand. I really, honestly do," she said, smiling as she rested her foot on the chair and wrapped her arm around her knee. Each of the lines in her cheeks pushed in as she smiled and Bella relaxed, taking comfort in the familiarity of her mother's face. "It's just so typical of you to keep something like this bottled up and when you do, you always explode, but it's never a bad explosion," she said, her words quickening when Bella's face began to fall. "It's never a bad thing because it shows how much you're worried. And I do, I completely understand. I'm just sorry that I haven't gotten to hear this before."

Bella looked at her hands where they touched the edge of the table. She didn't like her nails-stubby and rough from having been bitten to the quick. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you," she said in a small voice.

She could see her mom nodding from behind her eyelashes. "It would've been nice to hear earlier, I'll admit. I mean, I haven't exactly told Phil we'd be going anywhere anytime soon, but I've been getting emails from him saying he was concerned about what was happening here and wondering what was going on."

Bella felt her stomach drop, but when she looked at her mother, Renee was shaking her head, scratching at her hair.

"I'll admit, I didn't know what he was talking about. I haven't actively tried to ask, either. I just figured he missed us," she said.

Bella nodded. "Did he say what he thought was going on?" she asked, her voice tentative.

Renee shook her head and picked up her fork. "I assume he thought we'd figure it out ourselves and that it didn't necessarily concern him," she said, taking another bite of her dinner.

Bella's heart hardened, a steely outer coating falling into place as she thought about that. _He's been lying to my mother. He knew I was screening his calls and he didn't tell her about that. It doesn't make sense. He's a guy-if something's wrong, especially if I'm standing in the way, then he's going to tell somebody. What the hell is he playing at? _"So, what are you going to do?" she asked, keeping her voice low, innocent. She wondered for a moment if she ought to tell her mother about his calls, all the ones she _hadn't _gotten from him.

Her mom just shrugged. "I think we can take a break, at least for a little while. I'm sure he has stuff he needs to be doing and so do I. I mean, we don't _have _to rush into things. Florida's a big decision, and if we're not ready for it, then we're not going. It's too much to fight."

Bella felt everything in her fall. This wasn't the way she wanted the conversation to go, and now that it had, she didn't know what she wanted.

_We're not going to Florida. So that's good, right?_ "Okay," she muttered. She looked up and saw her mother nod, a somewhat deadened look in her eyes. She'd never seen her mother this upset-not even when she and Charlie had taken up fighting. It didn't sit right in her stomach, but she didn't know how else to deal with this.

_It's too much to fight_. _Has she been waiting for him to ask her to go to Florida?_ "Mom, did you really want to go with him?" she asked. Bella hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath until it all came out in a rush, leaving her feeling winded and empty. Now that she wasn't holding onto her air any longer, her heartbeat jumped in her chest.

Her mom didn't look at her for a long time. She sat there, twirling her fork between her fingers, and stared at the tines as they caught the overhead kitchen light. Bella counted one, two, three turns before her mother finally put the fork down and sighed, wiping her hand across her forehead. "I would've liked to, yes. I haven't met his family just yet and we've been together for almost two years. I'm scared I'll never get to."

"Then why can't you go and leave me behind?"

Her mother balked. "That's not how this works, Bella. You're too young to be left alone, not to mention the fact that they're going to need to meet you, too, should anything ever happen between us. It's a lot more complicated than all of that. There's a lot more involved here than just you and me traveling to Florida for a little while."

Bella didn't know what to say. She hadn't been told this before and she hadn't felt this guilty, but it was also the first time she ever questioned her mother's judgment. _It's just a relationship. There's nothing "more involved" about it_. "Can I go stay with dad, then, or is it too late?" she asked, her voice tiny.

She didn't have to look up to see her mom's lips purse. "Like I said, Bella, there's a little more involved here than just you and me traveling. You'd need to be there for him to meet and his family to get to know."

"But I'm not the one they're marrying," she said.

Renee put her knee down and leaned forward, her eyes flashing. Bella shut her mouth. "You're the most important person in my life. They're going to be marrying both of us, Bella. That's not a question, that's a fact," she said.

_So in other words, I'd have to go. _She slumped in her chair a little bit, but not enough for her mother to see.

Renee sat back, her eyes glazing over for a moment. "Clearly, though, this is too big of a decision to make right now. We're obviously not ready for something like this." She sighed and studied Bella, who didn't make a sound. Bella sat staring at the ground, her hands pressed together between her knees. "We're going to have to meet them eventually, though. I'm going to be marrying him. Is that the only reason?" she asked. Bella looked up. "Is Florida the only reason you don't like him?"

Bella looked back at the floor and pressed her knees together, hurting the backs of her hands and making her palms sweat. "I don't understand why you need another husband," she said.

Bella heard the creak of the chair as her mother sat back. "It's not _another _husband. I've told you this before-when I married your father, I was very young. Now, I've grown up a little bit and I'm ready to make that kind of commitment." She looked over and saw her mother shrug. "Phil's a great guy and he really likes us. He cares about us. What's not to like about someone who does that?"

"That's not the only reason you're marrying him, though, right?"

Renee quirked her eyebrow. "I'm not marrying him, Bella. We're going on a couple of dates and we're seeing how things work out. it just so happens that they've worked enough for our relationship to last over a year, and that's very nice."

Later that night, before she went to bed, Bella heard her mom on the phone. She didn't have to sneak downstairs to know who she was talking to, or about what. She hadn't ratted Charlie out for being the first person to hear her complaints, so the only other person it could've been was the man in question. She leaned against the wall to the bathroom, where her mother's voice echoed up the stairs and bounced around the bedroom doorways a little bit, as she listened to Renee talk about why "Bella's so upset about leaving Arizona." She talked about that for a little while, but finally, at the end of the conversation, Bella heard her sigh and say yes, of course they're going to come visit. They wouldn't miss it for the world.

When the phone was back on its cradle and her mother had begun walking around the house doing her nightly rituals, Bella snuck down the stairs under the guise of getting a glass of water. She found her mother at the kitchen sink, her hands pressed to the counter as she looked out the window and into the darkened backyard.

"I guess this means we're going to Florida?" Bella asked when she entered the room.

Renee jumped a little bit, but she nodded as she turned around. The one amazing thing about Renee was that she didn't bullshit. If you wound up knowing something, then she wasn't going to deny it to your face. "He's got a place and everything. We just need to get tickets and arrive at the right time."


	3. Chapter 3

Everything was set to go. They had a week before they were expected to take off for the Sunshine State and they'd just started making plans for Bella to finish school.

Bella called her dad up and tapped her foot as she listened to the phone ring. When it went to the message machine, she sighed.

"Dad, it's me. Listen, I've been thinking about this and I realized that I really don't want to go to Florida. I need you to call me back, okay?" She hung up with a click and went back to her room, her eyes on the patio where her mother was sitting with a book.

That night, he called her back while Renee was out of the house picking up Chinese food for dinner.

"Have you talked to your mother about this?" he asked the moment she said 'hello.'

"No. I wanted to discuss it with you first."

She heard him sigh into the phone. "What's going on that you want to come up here so badly?"

Bella balked. "I miss you? Aren't I allowed to miss my father?"

"Is this about me, or is it about your mom and Phil?"

She went quiet for so long that he made a thoughtful noise.

"That's what I figured."

"Look, dad, if she wants to ruin her life with him, that's fine, but I don't want to go with her. I don't want to live with him."

"If your mother likes him, I'm sure he's a nice person, Bella."

"Can I come and live with you or not?"

"Yes. Of course you can."

She sighed and smiled at the heavens.

"But you have to talk to your mother first."

Her smile slipped. Frowning at the floor, she scuffed her shoe along the ridges in the tile and tried to picture the way this conversation would go. The image of sitting on a pile of porcupines came to her mind.

"Bella? Are you listening?"

"Yeah, I'm here," she said. "Can I call you back tonight if she says yes?"

Charlie laughed a bit on the other end of the phone. "Sweetheart, you can call me anytime."

Bella smiled a bit and then felt her heart stop. The sound of a car door slamming came from the garage. "I have to go. I'll talk to you later."

Renee walked in as she was putting the phone back on the cradle. "Who was that?" she asked as she put the bag of Chinese take-out down by the counter.

Bella pointed to the phone. "Dad. He just wanted to check in."

Her mom blinked and then nodded as she pulled out the white containers. "Oh. That's-nice of him. Here, help me out with this. Why haven't you set the table?"

They made quick work of the meal and were sitting down in no time. Over the clink of forks and the sloshing of water and soda in their glasses, they let their bare toes trail along the floor as they looked outside and watched the sky grow darker in the west.

Bella took a deep breath. "What would you say if I told you I wanted to move in with dad?"

Renee almost dropped her egg roll, but Bella kept her eyes on her plate. "I'd ask why you want to do that. We have two tickets to Florida already."

Bella's fork scraped against the plate as she moved the rice around her steamed vegetables. "I just-I don't want to live with Phil. Dad says I can-"

"Is that what you were talking about with him on the phone? Is he the one who asked you to move in? Is he the one who's putting you up to this?"

"Mom, no. God." Bella scoffed and let her fork clatter to her plate. The silence that settled over the table was broken only by the sound of night animals moving about beyond their back door. "Did you ever think that I just don't want to live with Phil?"

Renee's face paled and she twirled her egg roll between her fingers. "You really don't like him, do you?"

"Well, if I have a choice between living with him or my father, I'm sorry but I'm going to choose dad. At least I know Forks. I don't know Florida and I don't know what's over there and I don't know Phil that well and I don't want to be moving all over the country just because he asks us to." The words came out in a rush of breath and Bella surprised herself by running her hands over her eyes and feeling the wetness that leaked out there. Standing up, she wandered to the sink and dried her face with a paper towel.

"I'm sorry this has been so hard on you," Renee said. "I wish you would've told me."

Bella sniffled and blew her nose. "Yeah, well. You were in love. I didn't think I could." She threw the tissue out and went back to the table, curling her fingers around the back of her chair. "Could we get a refund for the extra ticket?"

Renee nodded. "I'll try to find out tomorrow. And if not, I'll see if we can change it. If you really want to live with your father in Forks instead of Florida, I guess that would be okay. But," she said, standing up. "I don't want you thinking you have to go behind my back to get what you want, or that you have to do things like this without telling me."

Bella wrapped her arms around her mother's waist and laid her head on her mother's small shoulder. Her eyes wandered to the bulletin board by the front door, where a postcard from Forks had been tacked since her first visit there when she was a little girl.

She didn't want to admit it then, but part of her was really, really excited that she was about to go live with her father.


End file.
